


Waters of Home

by Scattyuk



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Canon compliant for now, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 04:56:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18066998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scattyuk/pseuds/Scattyuk
Summary: "How can there be muscle memory when these muscles never sailed before?"What does it mean to be a real person? Who is the Ash Tyler that was grafted onto a Klingon shell? A mission and a boat trigger the search for self.Set sometime after S2E8, may become rapidly AU depending on how S2 progresses!





	1. The boat

It started with a boat. Not a human boat, and not on Earth; a glorified skiff Ash termed it, on a pre-contact planet where Discovery had detected possible red angel activity.

“Stay in cover, avoid conversation if you can,” the Captain had warned them. “All we need is a reading up close.”

And since ‘up close’ meant in the middle of a lake, there had really only been one person they could send down with her.

“You’ll be okay?” Pike had asked, catching Burnham’s elbow.

“Of course, Captain. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t look like he believed her, but he didn’t say more either. That the long-promised explanation was still outstanding remained unspoken.

 ---

It had been easy in the end to make their way from the woods where they beamed down in replicated clothes to the lakeside and into the skiff. Michael cast off and Tyler pulled tight the sail as he reached a long arm to push out from the jetty. A few shoves with an oar and they caught a sudden breeze.

 _Don’t stare_ , she told herself, as they skimmed across the water, the sun shedding coppery lights in Ash’s dark hair. But he turned and caught her anyway. His newer, thicker beard obscured far more of his face than the old stubble, but she saw the smile flicker at the corner of his mouth regardless.

“Here,” he said, handing her a rope. “I need you to keep this taut while I adjust the front sail.”

She nodded silently, holding on until he returned and took both the rope and tiller once more.

“We on track?” he asked, nodding at the tricorder at her waist.

“Entirely. One kilometre on this heading.”

It almost felt too easy. The weather too perfect. Their journey across the lake too straightforward. But since _easy_ and _straightforward_ were rarely part of Michael’s lexicon these days, she tried not to second guess herself, and leaned back on her elbows, letting the sun warm her face.

“It’s funny,” Ash said at last, his voice cutting through with an edge to it.

She opened her eyes and looked across. “What is?”

“This.” He flexed his hand around the rope, drummed his fingers on the tiller. “It feels so familiar. Every movement feels natural.”

Michael frowned in confusion. “You said you remember sailing on Earth before the war.”

“I do. I remember – everything. The feel of the wind in my hair. The texture of rope running through my hands. The adrenaline of a race, overtaking on a turn. But this – the motion, the patterns. It’s like muscle memory.” His voice cracked. “Michael, how can there be muscle memory when these muscles never sailed before?”

She reached across to cover his hand with hers. “I don’t know, Ash.”

“God knows if I ever really had a boat at all,” he added, a half-despairing look in his eyes. “Perhaps that’s just something my brain created, around the fragments of Ash Tyler they fed into my mind.” He ran the back of his other hand across his face. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t – you don’t need to-“

“You’re in pain. You need to talk. You can talk to me.” She squeezed his fingers.

He gave a broken laugh. “That’s not what you said -“

“I know,” she cut him off. “I know, but I was wrong. You don’t have to do this alone. I didn’t, not the real healing. I had Tilly. Stamets. Lorca for what that was worth. And you.”

“For all the good that did you in the end.”

She ran her thumb against his, her eyes drifting away. “To feel like I was worth loving, after what I’d done? That did me more good than you can imagine.”

She heard his breath catch.  “I’m sorry I let you down,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for what he did to you. What I – we – did. For what I said after, about your parents and...” He trailed off.

They were both silent for a moment, words uttered in haste all those months ago echoing silently around them. _Because your parents were killed by Klingons and then you fell in love with one._

“It wasn’t a Klingon I fell in love with, Ash.” And the warmth spreading from their hands told her that was still present tense.  His response was faint and uncertain by contrast.

“I wish I knew how to be sure.”

And then her tricorder started beeping, jolting them both back into duty.  Tyler pulled on the sail, turned the tiller, expertly moved around the small boat to bring it round and to a halt in the water. Burnham started frantically measuring for tachyon particles and sending readings back to Discovery and neither of them said a word more until it was done and they were tacking slowly back to shore.

“I think,” Michael said quietly at last, “I think you need to go to Lake Shasta.”

He looked at her in surprise and she reached to catch his fingers once more.

“I think _we_ should go.”

 ---

Michael had rarely been to California since leaving the Academy and she’d forgotten how chilly it could be on a grey May morning. But Ash didn’t seem to notice, as he waded up to his thighs in the water, his hair pushed back from his face, staring across the Lake with childlike wonder in his eyes. His breathing had been rapid and shallow from the moment they left the transport shuttle, gaze darting around, taking everything in. Until now. Standing in the waters of home.

When he eventually turned and started walking back towards her, a voice called out from behind them. “Hey flyboy!”

Ash’s eyes lifted and locked in shock on the red-haired man jogging towards them. “Devan?” he asked hesitantly, almost in disbelief.

“Yeah man. Who else?!” The man pulled him into a hug, slapping his back and then performing what Michael could only assume was the kind of ‘team handshake’ her human classmates had created at the Academy, their hands moving in a practiced series of grasps. “You still in Starfleet? Not seen you since before the war.”

Ash flinched but nodded. “Yeah. And you – still, um, still teaching on the lake?”

Devan grinned. “Still on the lake, still whooping your ass in a race if you want to try me? Bet you’re still too used to a cockpit than a boat these days.” There was a whistle and he glanced guiltily away. “Duty calls man, but hey, catch me after. Let’s get some moonshine on your porch like old days.”

Michael waited quietly as Ash watched his old friend run back towards the sailboats moored to the East. At last he looked away and when he met her eyes she saw that his were red-rimmed and over-bright. He took an unsteady step into her arms and then he was releasing shattered breaths into her neck.

“I’m a real person, Michael,” he sobbed. “I’m a real person.”

She ran her fingers into his hair, and she didn’t flinch anymore at his skin touching her throat, and she held him close to her heart. “Ash, you always were.”

 


	2. The Lake House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly the story didn't feel quite finished, so I added another chapter. Because real doesn't mean the same.

The house had a stillness to it. It wasn’t like Sarek’s residence on Vulcan – spartan, with sweeping lines and planes. Nor like her parents’ modest quarters, cluttered with toys and her mother’s books. It felt oddly like a boat – everything in its place, but plenty of loving details to draw the eye.  The first dust sheets had been removed carefully, reverently, but then others were whipped off, bundled into corners, to reveal furniture, a fireplace, the door to upstairs.  With the curtains opened, the light brought out a golden glow in the wood that formed nearly every surface.

“Mom pops up every now and then,” Devan had said as he handed over the key. “Kept an eye on it, cleaned it. Just in case. It’s good to see you back, man. We weren’t sure- well. A lot of folk never made it. It’s good to have you back.”

Michael watched as Ash’s long fingers moved gently over pictures, opened drawers, traced the lines of the mantel. He paused by the coat stand and kicked his boots off before sliding one foot tentatively, but not all the way, into a pair of faded sneakers.

“It doesn’t fit,” he said quietly.

“It’s not yours?” Michael asked.

“No, it’s mine. Was mine. But it’s all wrong now. Worn in the wrong places. My toes are too long. They were so careful to get my handprint right for the biometrics, but I don’t think they paid much attention to my feet. I don’t remember them shaving down my toes.”

Michael stepped forward and wordlessly pressed her forehead against his shoulder, slipping her hand into his. “We don’t have to stay,” she said eventually.

“No-“ Ash seemed to shake himself. “No, I want to. Everything was lost you know – almost everything I’d had with me on the _Yaeger_. House Mokai burned it all with what was left of me.” He reached to pick up a photo of a young boy and his dark eyed mother from a dresser. “I want to reclaim this at least.”

As promised, Devan arrived near sunset, with a bottle of moonshine and trail of friends who slapped Ash’s back, or kissed his cheek, and asked all the questions Michael knew he couldn’t answer.  She shook hands with new faces who pulled her into unexpected hugs and she avoided Ash’s gaze as they teased him for ‘always going for the smart ones’.

“You guys staying here tonight?” Devan asked, one arm looped round a woman he’d introduced as Brida. “I can send up fresh linens if you need?”

“That’s kind but not necessary,” Michael replied. “We have standard issue sleepbags if required.”

Devan swallowed a laugh. “Sounds cosy.” And exchanged bemused glances with Brida.

Michael wasn’t sure what led to the test of strength in the end, but it seemed to come from a joke about tillers and cheating on corners in a race. She noticed Ash laughing with his mouth but not his eyes. And then a table was cleared and Brida’s brother braced one arm, and Ash was forced with gentle shoves to sit opposite and link hands.  Brida’s brother was strong, and the veins in his biceps turned dark, even as Ash’s arm barely moved. For a moment it seemed that Ash might effortlessly win until he met her eyes and suddenly lost, she was sure, on purpose. Michael took a drink and wandered out to sit on the porch as laughter erupted around her.

Later he sat down beside her on the deck as the moon danced across the water and the last guests left, calling their goodbyes from the jetty. 

“You’re better at parties than you used to be,” he remarked with a gentle smile. “I think I even saw you relax for a moment.”

“I have come to believe communal merriment has its place in promoting wellbeing,” Michael replied serenely as he snickered. “Especially at times of stress.” She looked at him a moment longer. “Why did you let him win?”

He shrugged. “How could I explain why he couldn’t beat me? Hank’s a strong guy. We wrestled – I don’t know how many times in the old days. I never won.” He stared out at the water, taking a mouthful of whatever liquor was in the bottle he held. “I’ll take you out in her tomorrow,” he said, nodding towards the yacht gently bobbing by the shore. “Catch some fish for lunch. Before we head back.”

“You aren’t going to keep her, are you?”

He shot her a surprised glance and then shook his head, tugging at the sleeves of a soft sweater he’d found in the wardrobe earlier. “I’m glad we came. Really. And I can’t thank you enough for coming with me, Michael. But I don’t think this is really my place anymore. Maybe – maybe there’ll be another boat one day, another house. But there’s no going back.” He looked back out at the lake. “All of the Voq I carried in me wasn’t enough to make Qo’nos home. And all of the me that’s real isn’t enough to make this fit. I’m not the same man that bought that boat.”

“The war changed us all. No one came out the same. We’re all somehow more than we used to be.  Or less.”

“Less rigid?” he asked with a smile.

“Perhaps,” she conceded, inclining her head. “Less afraid.”

He met her eyes for a long moment before he leaned across and gently, carefully, kissed her.

She blushed a little as he pulled back and then held out her hand with a twinkling eye. “Hi,” she said.  “I’m Michael Burnham.”

With a laugh that was half melancholy but perhaps more than half hope, Ash took her hand in his. “Pleased to meet you,” he replied. “I’m Ash Tyler.”

 

 

 


End file.
